The study of the origin of life is no longer a field in its infancy. The scientific foundation we have to build from today is enormously richer than it was fifty years ago, in facts and also in concepts. The difficulties of origins research are becoming those of a maturing field with a diverse technical knowledge base: a tendency toward fragmentation and the need of more effective ways for researchers to work together as a community.

In attempting to cover this technical material, which provides the needed factual basis for generalizations and constitutes the fascinating detail about life and its planetary context, it is easy to lose sight of the profound changes in point of view that have become possible even within the past 20–30 years. We are struck by how many key points in this argument we did not understand when we were introduced to the field, but which are now fundamental to our view of the origin and nature of life.

1. • The universality, the historical depth, and the striking economy and conservatism of core metabolism discovered within microbiology; within that, the overarching organizing roles of the TCA cycle and one-carbon reduction.

2. • The greater continuity that can now be seen between chemical reactions carried out on mineral substrates, those catalyzed by small molecules, and those catalyzed by enzymes.

3. • The complexity of the concept of individuality and its multifarious realizations, and the complementary importance of ecosystems, culminating in the biosphere as a whole.

4. • The degree to which a picture can be formed of the interacting dynamics of planetary subsystems during planet formation and early evolution, and within these the role of the aggregate biosphere as a geosphere and its feedback on the other geospheres.

5. • A better formulation of the nature of thermodynamic limits, integrating in a seamless way the dynamical and inferential interpretations, equilibrium and disequilibrium, and stabilization and error correction.

6. • An appreciation of the coherence of the concepts of phase and phase transition, the way they underpin and enable reductionist science by dividing continuous scales with hierarchies of ceilings and floors, and the enormous scope of their application, beginning with a comprehensive theory of matter, and we argue, continuing that theory eventually to a theory of life.